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ted

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NASL Edmonton and Ottawa would apparently have to pay an exit fee to NASL which was previously at 500K and is now 1 million by recent reports. No way thats happening IMHO at the startup of the new "C-League", like has been said previously the new league will operate alongside MLS and NASL. If the new league is successfull down the road these teams may join.

 

Like Macksam said it won't work with MLS's USL farm teams in the new league - would be dead upon arrival and without credibility. The new league is looking to be of a higher stature and must if it is to have any chance at success.

I don't see FCE and the Fury joining this new "C-League" right away IF the exit fee to NASL is indeed that high, unless some kind of arrangement can be made by the "C-League" ownership group(s) and/or the league itself to help pay for their NASL exits.

 

Regarding MLS' USL reserve teams, they definitely must NOT be included in the new "C-League." As a new league, the "C-League" understandably will be going through some ups and downs as it grows and solidifies itself into the Canadian sporting landscape. I expect the quality level of play will likely mirror the USL/NASL from the get go, but make no mistake, this new "C-League" must grow to become a top league, second only to MLS, and I believe the initial player wages (even with Canadian dollars) and a CFL tie will help the league get there.

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I don't see FCE and the Fury joining this new "C-League" right away IF the exit fee to NASL is indeed that high, unless some kind of arrangement can be made by the "C-League" ownership group(s) and/or the league itself to help pay for their exits.

FC Edmonton definately not. The Fury ownership (it is a billion dollar conglomerate right?) seem more receptive.

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FC Edmonton definately not. The Fury ownership (it is a billion dollar conglomerate right?) seem more receptive.

The OSEG ownership group is made up of 3 very successful real estate developers and Jeff Hunt, the owner of the 67s. The $1M exit fee is not a problem for them.

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...It would also pillage the American and lower European leagues of Canadian talent as almost any pro Canadian player could suddenly get a demestic job...

 

Not necessarily, if they view playing for less well known European clubs as their stepping stone to the big time where all the money and prestige is. A lot would depend on where they can make the most money and that means a lot would depend on the quality of the investors that could be attracted and their willingness to lose a lot of money for the first decade or so. The CSA and the larger provincial associations do not have a good track record of making their attempts at forming pro leagues actually match the substance of what is usually meant by the word professional. What tends to happen is that what are effectively amateur teams are marketed as being pro. Most of the soccer community is not fooled by this and steer well clear.

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Not necessarily, if they view playing for less well known European clubs as their stepping stone to the big time where all the money and prestige is. A lot would depend on where they can make the most money and that means a lot would depend on the quality of the investors that could be attracted and their willingness to lose a lot of money for the first decade or so. The CSA and the larger provincial associations do not have a good track record of making their attempts at forming pro leagues actually match the substance of what is usually meant by the word professional. What tends to happen is that what are effectively amateur teams are marketed as being pro. Most of the soccer community is not fooled by this and steer well clear.

What's being talked about here is nothing even remotely to what you're describing.

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If I were the faths, I'd want a minimum 5 years compensation for those losses he incurred over 5 years. The CFL may have the muscle and media power in thr prairies but in BC and Ontario, they're playing second fiddle to NHL and soon to be 3rd fiddle to MLS teams in attendance, not necessarily TV revenue yet. I think Fath, has a legitimate concern to be compensated for his losses to jump ahip to this C-league. And if the C-leagur decides to form there own team there, expect thr NASL to help out Edmonton, if Fath cries foul with Traffic going against thr CFL and CSA in marketing and maybr potential lawsuits.

 

First off, every sports league in Canada plays second fiddle to the NHL, except in Saskatchewan where there is no team and the Riders reign supreme or the Maritimes for the same reason. It's how it is, we live in Canada, hockey is number one and everyone else competes for the rest of the pie.

 

Second, Alberta is a prairie province, which is where Fath is located. To say "The CFL is strong and has lots of money where Fath is, but Fath won't sell because regions that aren't looking to buy his team don't have money" is the point that it appears you are trying to make here. I don't wholly understand where you are going with this. If you wanted to say that "Yeah the CFL owners aren't that rich, Fath is staying put" I'd understand that point, but I don't understanding bringing up BC and Toronto (Hamilton and Ottawa are doing quite well in their new venues) in a discussion about FC Edmonton.

 

Third, I agree with you, Fath isn't going to sell for peanuts and the NASL isn't going to just let teams walk away from it, unless it's in their best interests to allow it. Reasons such as "I want to focus more on the more potentially more lucrative US market and the declining Canadian dollar makes these teams far less viable" or "The USSF is giving me grief" or "Flying people to and from Edmonton is pricey and costing my owners a lot of cash" or "I need a team on the West Coast now or I'm going to lose my sanctioning, I have to relocate one and let someone else pickup the pieces" or of course the ever popular "Someone drove a dump truck of money to my house and Fath's house". I'm not saying any of these will happen, but they are reasons that might lean the NASL towards letting go of it's Canadian teams.

 

I think however, we all need to calm down and realize that Mr. Rollins is still the only member of the media talking about this and he's been wrong before. For all we know the NASL Canada division is still on the table. For all we know this talk of a Canadian league is wishful thinking and NASL expansion is all that is on the frontier.

To repost from my NASL post on the subject

 

Multiple sources, none of them public.

 

Even odder, he references an interview on July 31st where Pugh says it's not in the works as far as he knows

 

Quote

 

Our national team coach is promoting that idea as something that is necessary. There are a lot of Canadian players playing around the world and not in Canada. Canada has three MLS teams and two NASL teams. That’s not a lot for a country the size of Canada. So yeah, it would be better if we had that, but we also have to have the strong ownership groups that have the ability to operate them at a high level. Our country is at a disadvantage being so stretched from east to west. Yes, does Canada need it’s own league? I think we’d all like to see that. But we need to make sure it’s something that is going to be viable and sustainable for a long period of time. Are there other cities that could sustain an NASL team besides Ottawa and Edmonton? Yeah, I think there are a couple. But has anyone come out concrete and said ‘yes we’re going to do this’? No, I don’t believe so.

 

I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical that no other media outlet has made these leaks (especially TSN who would be a possible television partner who may have a vested interest in making such a leak), I'm skeptical that such a league would try to take the MLS bull by the horns and try to squeeze into those markets. I feel that this post changes nothing in regards to what we know.

 

EDIT: Off topic, tonight is the Ti-Cats home opener vs the Argos. It will be a packed place, so if in the stadium a Pro-Soccer team announcement suddenly materializes, I'll let the forum know :D

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Do you think if Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal tried to add NASL teams tomorrow it would work out well?

 

Not if they did it badly. As I said earlier (or was it in the other threead? Too many threads discussing the same thing) I would think the smart play would be to put teams in secondary markets like Quebec City,  Kingston and Victoria than adding another team to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

 

 

Victoria should be included instead of Vancouver really but hard to exempt such a big market.

 

That has been discussed and makes some sense.

 

 

For all we know the NASL Canada division is still on the table. For all we know this talk of a Canadian league is wishful thinking and NASL expansion is all that is on the frontier.othing in regards to what we know.

 

Heck for all we know this talk of an "independant" league is a negotiating tactic to get the NASL and USSF to accept a "Canadian Division". :)

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ESPN had some really negative subscriber numbers today, I think cord cutting is starting to hit the last redoubt of traditional cable viewing: the sports networks (I've personally not had cable for almost two years now).  TSN will be in the same boat immediately if they aren't already. I don't see them spending a lot of money on a broadcast deal for a new Canadian soccer league when the broadcast numbers for domestic soccer are pretty bad already.

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If I were the faths, I'd want a minimum 5 years compensation for those losses he incurred over 5 years. The CFL may have the muscle and media power in thr prairies but in BC and Ontario, they're playing second fiddle to NHL and soon to be 3rd fiddle to MLS teams in attendance, not necessarily TV revenue yet. I think Fath, has a legitimate concern to be compensated for his losses to jump ahip to this C-league. And if the C-leagur decides to form there own team there, expect thr NASL to help out Edmonton, if Fath cries foul with Traffic going against thr CFL and CSA in marketing and maybr potential lawsuits.

 

Not necessarily is an understatement. The CFL draws on average 400K-800K and 1M on a great day. The MLS draws 100K-150K on average and 300K on a great day.

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ESPN had some really negative subscriber numbers today, I think cord cutting is starting to hit the last redoubt of traditional cable viewing: the sports networks (I've personally not had cable for almost two years now).  TSN will be in the same boat immediately if they aren't already. I don't see them spending a lot of money on a broadcast deal for a new Canadian soccer league when the broadcast numbers for domestic soccer are pretty bad already.

 

ESPN's numbers are down because their cable subscription fee is about 4 times more than any other channel on cable. That is, ESPN charges cable companies $6.10 per month to carry their channel where as most other channels charge between $1.00-2.00. They do this because until recently they had a ton of expensive top end talent, Bill Simmons, Keith Olberman, Rick Rielly, Lou Holtz, etc... And they also way over paid for the rights to MNF, about $120M per game, which is about twice as much as CBS and Fox pay for Sunday games. There's a lot of cable companies dropping ESPN because of this.

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ESPN had some really negative subscriber numbers today, I think cord cutting is starting to hit the last redoubt of traditional cable viewing: the sports networks (I've personally not had cable for almost two years now).  TSN will be in the same boat immediately if they aren't already. I don't see them spending a lot of money on a broadcast deal for a new Canadian soccer league when the broadcast numbers for domestic soccer are pretty bad already.

 

Ontario is a bit of a different beast (I can't speak for the rest of Canada), there's not as many smaller cable operations. Every major city and town is either Rogers or Cogeco as far as cable is concerned, and of course Bell Satellite is a possibility everywhere and Bell is a part owner of TSN, so they aren't going to get rid of their own broadcast.

 

Cogeco (who serves pretty much all of Ontario outside of the GTA, Tri/Quad-City, London, Ottawa, the Hamilton Mountain and has a big presence in Quebec) has TSN on their basic cable package and Rogers Sportsnet on their expanded basic cable. They have a weird love/hate relationship with Rogers, but because of RDS, where their base resides, they tend to favour TSN. There's also talk of the Expos coming back to Montreal and if that happens, you can bet TSN/Bell is going to try to snap up the rights to oppose the Jays.

 

Rogers, as the most hated company in Canada right now, I don't think would risk dropping TSN. It's too well regarded, it's got too many good broadcast properties (NFL Rights, Most PGA, Tennis and Curling Majors, CFL, NBA, MLB outside of the Jays and some regional NHL and of course MLS) to just drop. It's a surefire way to send subscribers to Bell who will just buy single Sportsnet channels just for hockey.

 

This all said, fundamentally TSN isn't going to buy into the C-League for a major TV contract. I wouldn't even expect a quarter of MLS's deal, never mind the deal the CFL has. They'd be buying in with the intent of getting more content for TSN2 and for more Sportscentre fodder, because lets be honest, NASL grade soccer is still better then Poker.

 

The whole idea though is that the CFL owners tank the losses because the publicly owned teams want to keep the money in house and "Investing" in a new property keeps that money in their hands while expanding their sports fiefdoms, and the private owners either have a passion for the game/market they serve and are willing to tank a bit, until the game is grown to a point where they are getting a good gate and TV deal.

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Maybe player's like Issey Nakajima-Farran would be a good target for a new D1A Canadian league :

 

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/65043/what-theyre-saying-issey-nakajima-farran.html

 

"I got fired from the local Canadian (MLS) team in favor of an Argentinean"

 

One of the reasons we need our own National league instead of relying on the foreign USA's league's.

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Canadian players need to lose this whole sense of entitlement thing. The CanCon rules that are in place gave him an opportunity to show what he could do in MLS. He subsequently got dropped after Montreal also gave him a run in their first team and is now playing for Terengganu in Malaysia, because he wasn't good enough. It is an entertainment product and people have to actually be willing to pay and watch the games, if pro soccer is going to be stable and sustainable. Genuinely D1 level players that fit the bill on that can't simply be wished into existence.  I see much more of an effort being made to put the development pathway required to rectify that situation in place in the medium to long term from MLS than I do from the CSA, because the money that is being generated by their first teams in the here and now is available to fund the Academy system and L1O, PDL and USL teams.

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No one throws more money at academies than England, and they produce no results because the elite clubs would rather sign a foreigner than allow a young player to come through -as is done in more successful countries such as Germany who spend their youth development funds more wisely. This is where MLS is headed. Issey is one of our better technical players. He may be a fringe national team player, but if he were a player of any other background in CONCACAF, he would have a domestic job waiting for him where he'd be contributing by raising the overall technical standard of the league and push younger players who would be beside him, not behind him with no realistic hope of ever seeing the first team.

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In England, a lot of the players that don't make it through to the first team in a Premiership team's Academy system, still wind up having reasonably lucrative pro level careers at a lower level. I think MLS is serious about the Academy approach and is likely to be closer to the German scenario. The motivation behind it was that the super Y/PDL/NCAA pathway was generally seen as being inadequate compared to what happens overseas and that was also seen as hurting the USMNT. Time will tell obviously, but if they get their development system right and a byproduct of that is that it starts to also generate lots of genuinely pro level Canadian players through what happens at the three Canadian MLS franchises, conditions will be much more ripe for the emergence of D2 level sides with mainly Canadian rosters. It wouldn't be a case of pretending that amateur level games are pro as was usually the case with the bottom half of the standings in the original CSL back in the late 80s and early 90s. The Blizzard, 86ers and Steelers were usually playing at a decent standard, but some of the filler content made it difficult to convince people that the league was worth taking seriously overall. 

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Honestly I think you guys are kind of looking at this all wrong.  Is the support there?  Only one way to find out.  I'm starting up FB supporters group to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.  Posters, Social Media - Boots on the ground.  Add me on FB if you are crazy enough to think that this thing could work.  Sitting is the new smoking folks.

Guillermo del Quarto - thats me.  

O Canada Bitch

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/soccer/soccer-canadas-montagliani-joins-fifa-reform-task-force/article25929850/

 

Nice and all but not so sure the right response wouldn't have been to turn it down and focus on the enormity of issues we have right here at home which dwarf FIFA's.

Too tempting to turn it down.  You make a good point.  I also think that with this new chip on his shoulder he will start neglecting problems at home with our national teams and coaches.

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I've ran the idea of a Regina team past a few Rider fan friends this week are they were all pretty skeptical. With a total operations budget of even $2M a year you are taking a substantial amount of the RIders yearly profit to gamble on an unproven concept. This will never sit well on a fanbase that saw their team almost go insolvent within living memory. Nor has anybody heard anything in terms of rumours from the Riders organization about this team getting organized.

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